A must-win Champions Cup game at the Stade Mayol in January. Munster have been here before. The province will be hoping their second visit to Toulon is nothing like the first.
It's almost 13 years ago to the day since Munster's one and only trip to Toulon.
On that occasion, Tony McGahan's side were handed a resounding 32-16 beating by the French side, which ended their hopes of reaching the knockout stages with a game to play. Does that situation sound familiar?
If Munster fans have had an ominous feeling about this game, watching that January 2011 defeat back won't do much to help them feel any better.
At that point in time, Toulon were still a couple of years away from being the rugby version of Real Madrid's 'Galacticos' that they would go on to become, but they were on the right path.
Jonny Wilkinson, Felipe Contepomi, Juan Martin Fernandez-Lobbe and Joe van Niekerk were some of the foreign stars in the French side that day, with their infamous former president Mourad Boudjellal intent on making them the best side in the world.
Despite all that international talent, the most influential player that day was scrum-half Pierre Mignoni; Toulon born and bred.
The former France international was a 33-year-old veteran in his final playing season when the sides met 13 years ago.
It was his chip over the top that befuddled Doug Howlett and allowed Christian Loamanu to score their opening try, and it was his cutting run and offload that set up Paul Sackey to get the second, which effectively killed off the game before half time.
Early in the second half, Mignoni's scrap with Ronan O'Gara led to the Munster out-half being sent to the sin-bin. Like all wily scrum-halves, Mignoni had his say in the argument, and avoided any punishment.
Mignoni retired that summer, and moved straight into coaching at his home club, where he was backs coach to the Galacticos under Bernard Laporte as they became the most dominant club side in Europe, winning a Top14 title in addition to their three Champions Cups. Today, he's their director of rugby. A lot's happened since then.
While Toulon and Munster have five Champions Cup titles between them, their glory days passed each other like ships in the night.
That Toulon win against Munster in 2011 saw the province miss out on a place in the quarter-finals for the first time in 13 years. We didn't know it at the time, but it was the end of one era and the start of another, as the French side would soon go on to dominate Europe in the middle of the decade.
They would meet again in the semi-finals of 2014. By now, the French side were at their peak, and their president Boudjellal was spending like a drunken sailor. In addition to Wilkinson and Fernandez-Lobbe, they'd added the likes of Carl Hayman, Juan Smith, Delon and Steffon Armitage, Bryan Habana, Drew Mitchell and Matt Giteau among others.
With hindsight, it's an achievement that Munster kept them tryless in Marseille that afternoon, but even a classic 'Nobody Believes in Us' Munster performance couldn't stop a side heaving with that level of talent.
In addition to brushing aside Saracens in the Champions Cup final, Toulon would see off Castres to become Top14 champions later that month, clinching a French and European double that has only been achieved twice before and since (Toulouse 1996 & 2021).
While the 2014 double was the apex, they were still able to complete their European three-in-a-row a year later when they defeated Clermont in the final at Twickenham, and although they would get back to the Top14 decider twice more in 2016 and 2017, they were no longer the force they once were.
Boudjellal was still spending money, but after Laporte left as director of rugby to become the president of the French federation, Toulon couldn't find the right coaching glue to stick those pieces together. Diego Dominguez, Mike Ford, Richard Cockerill and Fabien Galthie all came and went in the space of two years.
Having played their part in ending Munster's golden years, it was somewhat appropriate that the province would put one of the final nails in Toulon's dynasty in 2018. Andrew Conway's sensational individual try (below), converted by Iain Keatley saw Munster snatch a dramatic 20-19 win at Thomond Park.
The Toulon side that day reads like an All-Stars team: Guihem Guirado, Ma'a Nonu, Duane Vermeulen, Semi Radradra, Mathieu Bastareaud, Josua Tuiosva and Chris Ashton all started the game, but a once great team were now just individuals.
It marked the end of Boudjellal's great project. In the summer of 2018, there was a cull of the wage bill as Ashton, Habana, Vincent Clerc, Radradra, Nonu, Vermeulen and Fernandez-Lobbe were among 16 senior players who were released.
The club's outspoken president still spent big on the likes of Julian Savea, Rhys Webb, Eben Etzebeth and Sergio Parisse across the next couple of years, but with new French player-quota regulations, the Galactico days were over.
Having heamorrhaged coaches over the previous couple of seasons, Patrice Collazo was brought in and was at least given time to get things right, as they stuck with the former Toulouse and Gloucester prop, finishing ninth in the Top14 in his opening season.
Collazo may have brought some stability on the pitch, but away from the pitch Boudjellal was becoming more outspoken than ever, and it reached a nadir in February 2019 when he came to blows - verbally - with Savea, telling the French media he wanted a DNA test on his supposed All Black winger.
It was no surprise that by December of 2019, Boudjellal (below) handed over they keys of his club to pharmaceutical giant Bernard Lemaitre, who bought out his controlling share just in time for Covid-19 to financially cripple the sport.
Lemaitre hasn't quite restored the glory years to the Cote d'Azur, but in the last 18 months they've started putting the pieces back together.
They've still retained some of the chaos from the Boudjellal years; in 2021 Collazo was sacked midway through the season, with former Munster number 8 James Coughlan having to step up as an interim head coach.
Franck Azema was brought in as director of rugby with Mignoni returning to his home club as head coach, and the pair brought them to successive Challenge Cup finals in both 2022 and 2023, losing the first of those finals to Lyon before ending their eight-year gap in silverware by defeating Glasgow in the 2023 final at the Aviva Stadium.
There's been a further shake-up since. After that Challenge Cup win, Azema departed for personal reasons, with Mignoni stepping up to the top job, while Coughlan has since moved on, with Parisse going straight in from retirement to coaching. Mathieu Bastareaud, one of the Galacticos of the mid-2010s is now team manager.
A look through the squad to face Munster this afternoon shows their ambition, with Leicester Fainga'anuku, Melvyn Jaminet, and Ben White all having arrived in the off-season. If there is to be another great Toulon era ahead, their winless start to this Champions Cup shows it may be a slow build.
Munster will be hoping to slow it down even further.
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